Technology companies charge towards next generation battery future

Metro explores the race to break the boundaries in next generation batteries, raising the prospect of electric cars that can travel for 500 miles and laptops that can last for months without being charged.

Charge: The race is on to develop the next generation battery

Battery power has come to dictate our daily habits so much, you’d think we’d all evolved into Duracell bunnies. Most of us can’t be separated from our phone chargers for much more than a day and, as much as drivers would like to dump petrol-guzzlers in favour of battery power, the short life between charges is often impractical. No wonder technology companies are racing to produce a next generation, long-lasting battery.

IBM

Hot off the blocks, IBM has invented a ‘breathing’ battery that can power an electric vehicle for 500 miles (800km) on a single charge. A mass-production EV able to match the range of a petrol car would be a watershed development.

Power surge: IBM has worked on a ‘breathing’ battery

Current electric cars suffer from a range of around 100 miles (160km) because their lithium-ion power cells – which convert chemical energy into electricity – are too big and heavy for longer journeys.

Demonstrated by the computer giant just last week, the lithium-air battery produces power by drawing in oxygen from the air and recharges by expelling it. By removing contained oxides (oxygen), IBM’s battery becomes smaller and lighter, relying on the surrounding air to filter into it.

‘The fundamental operation of the battery is no longer in question,’ said Winfried Wilcke, senior manager for Battery 500 project, in an interview with Wired.com. But it won’t go into production until at least 2020.

Graphene

Lithium-air batteries face stiff competition from carbon-based alternatives that use graphene to help generate power. Wilcke believes graphene isn’t stable enough for long-term use but researchers at Hong Kong Polytechnic University claim to have created a graphene-based battery that could run artificial organs from body heat.

The device captures thermal energy and converts it into electricity, in similar fashion to a solar cell. If successful, it could also power mobile devices or produce renewable energy.

The university’s Zihan Xu explains: ‘The output of our device is also continuous and it works solely by harvesting the thermal energy of the surrounding copper-chloride ions, which in theory is limitless.’

IBM battery 500 project leader Dr Winfried WilckeApple

The company has a patent to use a material called Liquidmetal in a hydrogen fuel cell that could power its devices for a month between top-ups.

Apple’s space-age alloy is rumoured to form the casing on the forthcoming iPhone 5 and new MacBook Pro; it already features on the iPhone’s sim card release tool.

Liquidmetal is strong, light, can be moulded easily and doesn’t corrode – perfect for use in a hydrogen fuel cell where the only byproduct is water. Expect to see the technology being implemented as soon as next year.

3M

Meanwhile, manufacturer 3M is opting for silicon with a battery that could power your tech for 40 per cent longer. The system works by passing the electric current through a silicon-lithium alloy, which boosts energy levels by almost half.

Research has been ongoing since the 1990s, financed by a $4.6 million (£2.9 million) investment from the US Department of Energy, but a commercial rollout is expected in the next two years.

Chris Milker from 3M says that it ‘takes a while for a revolutionary innovation to be implemented but a lot of that investment will finally pay off’.

Apple is investing in LiquidmetalPower-saving apps

A silicon solution has also been backed by former Google boss Eric Schmidt and Stanford University, where a team has released a report blaming poorly coded websites and advert-heavy apps for draining power from smartphone and tablet batteries.

The report found Apple.com to be the worst offender because it doesn’t have a separate site for mobile users. Google’s Gmail was the most efficient.

The researchers tested an Android smartphone, comparing the energy consumption of websites such as Internet Movie Database and Wikipedia. By tweaking the popular encyclopedia’s design, researchers found they could reduce energy usage by 30 per cent without affecting browsing.

The report says: ‘Despite the growing popularity of web browsing, the energy consumed by a phone browser while surfing the web is poorly understood. We hope this paper demonstrates the importance of building a mobile site optimised for mobile devices.’